Jumping on the Teen Pregnancy Bandwagon

I know there have been quite a few recent posts about teen pregnancy, given the pregnancy pact at Gloucester High School where 17 girls have become pregnant. A couple of arguments exist as to whether anyone has the right to tell these teenagers whether or not they are ready to be mothers. If these girls possess the resources to take care of a child, and by this I mean can they provide food, shelter, medical care, and anything else the child may need, then I am all for them going out and getting pregnant. Unfortunately, however, it will be the taxpayers of America providing a life for these teenagers and there infants.

First, let’s take a look at the abstinence program. Our government invests $176,000,000 annually on these programs designed to keep kids from having sex, yet teenage pregnancy has risen 3% since these abstinence programs were created. Obviously the “just say no” to sex campaign is futile and our government is flushing these tax dollars down the toilet.

Not only have our taxes been wasted on an ineffective program, but our government is even shelling out MORE money by picking up the tab for the majority of these girls’ prenatal care and births. The United Way estimates that tax dollars are used to pay for 85% of the births where the mother of the child is a teenager. 85%! Once these babies are born, many of these young families receive welfare, food stamps, and Medicaid. Adding up all of the money invested in these young lives may be quite difficult to determine, however there is a website, www.usaspending.com, that shows where the majority of our tax dollars are going. Here we can see that for the fiscal year of 2008, so far $886,439,224 has gone to the New York Department of Family and Children Services. That is only one state, but you can get an idea of how astronomical the figure would be for all of the states. Granted, not all of these funds go toward young, teenage mothers, but I am sure that quite a bit of it does.

Now you may think that if these girls want to have a kid, more power to them. They may be emotionally ready to be a parent, but are they financially? Just remember when you get your paycheck from work and you see all of the taxes taken out that you are helping to raise those teenagers’ babies. You may not be ready to raise a family of your own due to a lack of financial dependence, but here you are paying to raise someone else’s child. Do you still think it is their business if they want to have a baby or not?

Now that we know who is paying for these kids to be brought into the world, let’s have a look at what becomes of these teenage moms. 70% of girls who get pregnant in high school never get their high school diploma, according to the United Way. I suppose the economy needs people to fill those minimum wage positions, but with such a low monthly income, their children will most likely remain on Medicaid throughout their lives, so the community gets to keep paying the bill.

So now we have these girls who are out there actually TRYING to get pregnant, which leads me to believe that they need to get hit by the reality train, and anyone with a job gets to financially support them in their efforts. Maybe high school cafeterias should spike all of their hot lunches with birth control pills. I am sure if the government dropped their abstinence program there would be plenty of money to finance the drugging of these teens. Who knows, maybe we can even save millions of tax dollars that would have been spent on providing medical care to pregnant teens can go towards a national health insurance….

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/06/health/06birth.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogi...
http://www.usaspending.gov/

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